Ctrl+K

Computational Thinking

Computational Thinking#

Course Description#

Being an effective programmer is not just about writing code, it’s about designing solutions to problems in a way that a computer would understand, i.e. designing and implementing algorithms. However, most introductory courses focus exclusively on the implementing, ignoring the design elements. Over two sessions, this course will introduce you to some fundamental principles that are the basis of writing computer code in any language and should enable you to write, develop and debug your code more effectively. This course is aimed at anyone who is currently programming or thinking about learning to program.

Course Objectives#

  • what an algorithm is and the role it plays in coding.

  • a number of computational thinking approaches and concepts for developing algorithms.

  • how to differentiate between bugs related to syntax from those related to the underlying algorithm to facilitate more effective troubleshooting.

Pre-requisite Knowledge#

There is no pre-requisite knowledge and the workshop is designed to be appropriate for anyone interested in any programming language.

Installation Guide#

It is recommended that you bring a laptop to both sessions. If you have access to a terminal or console (either via Rstudio, Python, Terminal(Mac), Git Bash, command prompt (windows)) that might be helpful but not critical. There are no pre-requisites in terms of prior knowledge or programming language, the workshop has been designed to be agnostic of any specific language.

Acknowledgements#

Some of the content in this workshop was influenced by

Developers#

This workshop was developed by Eilis Hannon and Jessica Shields as part of the Coding for Reproducible Research Initiative.

License Info#

Instructional Material

The instructional material in this course is copyright © 2024 University of Exeter and is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Instructional material consists of material that is contained within the “individual_modules/computational_thinking” folders in this repository, with the exception of code snippets and example programs found in files within these folders. Such code snippets and example programs are considered software for the purposes of this licence.

Software

Except where otherwise noted, software provided in this repository is made available under the MIT licence (https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).

Copyright © 2024 University of Exeter

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The software in this repository is adapted from software that is covered by the following copyright and permission notice:

Copyright © 2024 Software Carpentry

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Contents